Surrey, Henry Howard, earl of

The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.

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Henry Howard Surrey, earl of, 1517?–1547, English poet; son of Thomas Howard, 3d duke of Norfolk. His irascibility and continuous vaunting of his descent from Edward I resulted in his imprisonment on several occasions. Eventually he was convicted of treason on a trumped-up charge and executed. He introduced blank verse to English in translating two books of Vergil's Aeneid. Along with his friend Sir Thomas Wyatt, he popularized the Petrarchan sonnet form in English. He was the only poet mentioned on the title page of the well-known miscellany (1557) of Richard Tottel.

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Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of

Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of (1517–47) English poet. Like his cousin Catherine Howard, he died on the scaffold – a victim of the bloody power politics of Henry VIII's court. Surrey wrote some of the earliest English sonnets and, with his translation of two books of the Aeneid by Virgil, introduced blank verse into English poetry.

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